My excuses are no better than your own.
I won’t pretend I wasn’t tempted to let you slip
back into my past.

But it felt too much like leaving the lame
to be devoured by the lions, knowing the herd is safe.
That is the easy way out. That is the shallowness
of too many relationships,

and the press, camped on your street.
It’s fucked up. You fucked up. I can’t imagine
how cold the coffee is on your lips, as you look
across the breakfast nook & lock eyes
with your wife, how your kids
are dealing with this.

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

My doctor says I need to change my diet,
maybe gluten-free, to curb the toxins, of too much
artificial, over-processed
life,
cause we like that,
maybe feel that

the flavor
is not good enough, won't last long enough --
so we have to find ways to sustain it,

until coal rims our sockets,
a night-shade deeper than shadow, like a lioness
with belladonna in her eyes

My psychiatrist says "There is a pill for that."
Like an app. Apps and pills, perhaps
there is a correlation there.

My friends say, "That's fucked up."
and are not too far from the truth,
no more than any of us are.

Some days
it seems we need maps, like the ones at malls,
with big yellow dots.

The yellow dots say, You are here.
Of this we can be sure,

the heart makes the simplest things
so damn complicated.

A lost love found me, in you - like it followed
a dotted line across the ocean to the island w/the 'X'
put a spade to earth of my chest
until it hit a treasure box,
and opening the lid - flooded me
like a lone streetlight amongst the darkness

I am not content --
to be here,
a dot on a map,
doped up on a pill full with denial,
lost in an app, over-processed
or artificial,

There is no choice to the madness
that makes me see your face in every scoop of mash potatoes,
lay willingly down on the tracks to feel the hum
along my body as the train
is coming,
build houses of poems to bed down with vowels.
I search license plates for secret messages
to leave on your pillow.

When it rains, my feet get wet in you
& the sun are your finger tips, (or should it be is?)
I am tipsy,
I am drunk,
I make no sense ---

Ten stories up, only a corner of a small cotton sleep shift
peeks beyond perspective's angle / but she is getting it
in some hybrid Spanish / cryin' like the first bird
to catch the morning's affection

I don't speak the language well enough,
but know the tune / an old spiritual penned by a psalmist
back when Jesus was mo' hip to pipe organs than guitar riffs /
and she's getting it / on

A lizard pauses on a trunk & cocks a head / the ice scoops cease
to scrape the next load / even the salty ocean breeze stops
stirring the trees to dance in the sacred moment,
a door shushes as it slides---

"Hey! SOME OF US ARE STILL TRYING TO SLEEP!"

echoes off coconuts unfallen & between buildings
packed with tourists and all their I been here t-shirts /
& she's gone

the dapple has brightened to a flare,
a great rumble of bodies & bedsheets / plans made to keep,
the ding of elevators / ants

nip at the edge of my legs /
they build whole cities, one nugget of dirt
at a time,
another couple hundred years,
maybe,
we'll see.

Saturday, September 19, 2015

I find two cents on the storm drain
which beg permission to hear someone's opinion.

There is no irony
lost, in it being the same toll charged by Charon
for a trip across the river.

These small deaths
to self, add up to homicides & chalk

lines on the sidewalk,
the corner shopkeeper washes off
easily with leftover mop water,

wet spot,
steaming in the early morning air,
no longer a stain
on the concrete.

We
really
should
tombstone

these moments, to remind us that listening
has a cost / measured in lives,
450-500 milliliters,

bags of blood,
donated by those willing to lay down
on their backs.

Even if some look away,
when the needle
slips the skin.

Poet,
sometimes it's best
if you just shut your mouth.

How in love we are with ourselves. With our voice. With our verse. In a rush to publish, because that makes us - what? A poet. An artist. A writer. Something tangible to justify our sense of self. Which came first, opinion or truth? We've gone from Nirvana's "Entertain us" to thinking we are the Entertainment. If you "Like" us, leave a tip. Leave a comment. If you are really good, you can do it in one word. Brilliant, is over used. Four words is stretching it. Eighty can be just as shallow. But that assumes, you're listening to anything but your own voice. Who gives a fuck? Only a few. I will tell you, that much. We become martyrs to our art - so alone and un-understood. Imprisoned by self. Eventually, when we have to produce more to keep the feeling of being - it all tastes the same - because it's mass-produced. Spit out like a half formed child & expected to live. Everyone is a poet. Everyone is a poet. Pass the crayons, I am going to start calling myself Picasso.

Thursday, September 17, 2015

I am a conscientious objector to Jesus toasters,
of burning the Savior
face in bread like the backside
of cattle
branded
to express
ownership

& communion marketing
that forgets its a gathering to remember,
this is for the many
not the elect
the strips of flesh flayed from the back
of Christ are not woven
into a whip,
which when deftly swung
will beat the sin out
of anyone ---
someone ---
ourselves---

I can never live up to what you expect,
the picture you have placed over the mantle of your heart
& look up to,
I look up to

I will fail

walk through the garden alone,
fall & feel every thorn on the way
down.

The gravity of this. The thorn in the flesh.
The ink stain on the wedding dress.

I don't trust anyone
who says they are not a mess, whose faith was not tested
today. Since lunch. In the last hour.

I don't want to look hip,
be accepted at a Starbucks church,
overpriced, overcooked, over -
easy & runny

I don't want a 1000 flavor shots of syrup
I have to pay extra for to stomach the taste
nor need another espresso shot
just to feel the spirit.

I am sick of entitlement

& want to nail poems to doors like theses
that say:

YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN ART THAT ISN"T
STAYING WITHIN THE LINES OF MASS PRODUCED
COLOR PAGES

We
spend too much time boycotting clinics with pictures
of fetuses, while aborting God's children
that will never bless a pew
with its presence

When my time comes,
I want to be so busted up they need boxes
to pick up the pieces & them still not being
able to find most

A shattering,
leaving slivers people step on,
not in, like bullshit, which may be warm in the moment,
but follows you around where ever you go.

I am not going any where, yet,
but you won't find me in places I need to pledge
allegiance -- where community is only a name
we call ourselves, that makes us feel good about how we treat
each other
We don't sell ourselves
nearly well enough.

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

I keep change in a mason jar by my bed,
because it is inevitable
& if it is going to happen
I might as well embrace it, like a long lost friend
not the one that keeps coming around
after stealing your lover,

which is fucked up,
cause you still smell them on your pillow,
but try to picture them & all you get is that friend's face,
going down on them,
wash your sheets all you want,
it's not going away & one night stands
are momentary placebo pills

Every day I find pennies in parking lots,
cast off as worthless, in mud puddles & those slick spots
where oil drips on the way to overheating
our engines.
We don't like small change.
Pretend it doesn't mean much. Don't want the weight
in our pockets, to throw off our walk
& there are so few wishing wells.

They clink
in my jar all the same & build up, to big change,
over time. My father once filled one of those plastic water jugs
people lean on at work and it was almost a thousand dollars.

I learned the value of common sense,
of saving what no one else wants.

On Saturday,
I found a buck - fifty in dimes & quarters
on the asphalt

"Didn't you see this?"
I said to a group of younger strangers, twenty feet in front
of me.

"Yeah, But."

We don't like change. Perhaps that is why we capture moments
in digital grandness, so we can remember what it was like
before, but every time we look at them
it is evident -

Your hair was longer then, had more curl,
our bodies were sun kissed, moon kissed, dusk & dawn kissed,
and everything in between // before autumn came
like a wind you can't see but pushes

you

There were rocks we sat on,
so big & unmoving, and the trees still had leaves
that were not leaving

I like to lay on the roof of the building
because the stars are ever moving & every once in a while
they wink out - I don't want to miss them,

I don't want to miss anything,

but I do,
it's a ritual,

each night I put my shoes away,
take my belt off & empty my pockets.

I put my daily change in the jar,
listen to the music of it falling into community
with all that came before it

Tuesday, September 8, 2015

We forgot the feeling of winning the race,
even if only for once in our life,
of piercing the egg

We forgot the feeling of two hearts beating at once,
no matter if it was love or rage or madness that drew them
together, and restarting -- in sync

The horror of losing everything
that brought us comfort – the warmth of living
in a hug, of constant sustinence, voices speaking to us
from beyond –

how cold it was
how bright
when we were pushed out// the first time we were
pushed out //disconnected

How falling felt
when we taught our mothers how to give birth
because no two are the same

We forgot our uniqueness //
like unwrapping the candy we put the sweetness
in our mouth to suck / discarding the wrapper
w/its list of ingredients

Our list of ingredients as refuse
Refusing to believe / because you can not create it,
it just is

And we are more, but settle for less,
perhaps because the first time, we fell off the bike,
our fathers left / our fathers wouldn’t leave
no matter how tight we held the blankets to our bodies,
because we trusted the first boy that thought we were something
else&the first girl to invite us back to birth,

because we could never replace what we lost,
& there was nothing in the found box

We forgot our purpose,
when nothing felt meaningful & we were overcome with
so much / sensation / We forgot feeling
when numbness held us like a friend should
but didn’t

We forgot the world is not a stage,
real people don’t need scripts, actors get paid
& there are no stunt doubles when life gets messy,
you have to take a chance
or love is concerned,

Monday, September 7, 2015

The mother deer is back with her young, herding them with more than silence. One dead eye dangles, out of socket, on her cheek; a living reminder --- of near misses & parting shots by those going too fast to stop. Their heads bow in prayers of tongue&teeth on grass & leavings; fallen pears, over ripe or gone soft. A promise kept so mundane we seldom notice, at worst take for granted; it will snow when we least expect it. Twenty feet, ten - she knows I am there, behind the grape arbor; out of season now, a tangled, dry mess. We know one another --- by smell, not comfortable enough to touch; just appreciate each other's transience. I finger the scratch of my chin, she hooves the grass -- the kids dance a little freer than all of us. A lawnmower, a couple doors down, tames a small patch. A mantis tests each foot before taking a step; halfway up, it rests.

The cloud mountains laugh,
looking down on all of us;
a little higher than yesterday.

Saturday, September 5, 2015

The moon sickle circles Saturn's hand
and all the masks have fallen
just in time to dance

The grass is wet but my bare feet find purchase
in the turning. This poem will never say everything.
I whisper each revision in the shell of your ear,
as a song guides waves to the shore,
ethereal as the light I hold
loosely.

The moon crosses the night
on a hill between two thieves,
I know what I stole from you,
but what have you stolen
from me?

A sickle? I am reaped
A hook? I am caught
A dance? Sharp as well.
But the moon?

She's just as deviant as the rest of us
a pruriently prying person;
one who likes
to watch.

Thursday, September 3, 2015

Ms. Mary Joe Castilleja has hair like a prairie fire,
lives alone in a second story apartment out back
the 7-Eleven
& every morning can be seen
walking out of town
on the edge
of the street,
merges with
the shimmer
on the surface
of the desert

Some say she was married once,
but now all she has is an indian paintbrush
she keeps in a back pocket
of her just right jeans & a bucket
of discount terra-cotta flower pots
she bought on sale at Jim's
one holy day

while all the prim roses were coming
down the crooked steps of the little white church
full of God & gossip;

she's more a roadside tangle,
a wild flower that knows a pew can be just
another windowbox, on a mortgaged porch

she has a place,
a wood crate turned on its side,
out among the cactus - where she ties her shirt up
& paints

wetting the tip with her tongue
& dipping it in wildflowers,
for the natural color,
no one notices
as they pass,

but she collects woodie stationwagons
& minivans with license plates
from far away places like Alaska
or New Hampshire,

all the vacation weary drivers
flock like checkerspot butterflies just wanting a nip
of a petal or cream sac,
promising affections
usually reserved for Spanish botanist, promising to whisk her off
to exotic locales like NW Russia,

for the climate of course --

she just laughs
and smashes another flower pot
gathering the sharpest shards
to give them life,
in purple, red-orange
& on cloudy days,
green - dark as her own
roots

Wednesday, September 2, 2015

It begins with a small prick, not enough
to burst the balloon, or warrant a name like BIG BANG,
but creates a slow leak

& we think, if I just squeeze the air that is left
in the right direction, I'll no longer limp
on half inflated legs or ---

Then end up naked, ass up, on the floor,
sucking scant oxygen into lungs hung like lead weights
around our neck,
watching the small circle of light
diminish.

This is how my roommate finds me,
flat,
still stretched from all that was once
within me
& I want to
say,

"What took you so long?"

But that would take
too much.

For three years I tried to forget,
fill the space an empty room affords, when everywhere I turned
I took up too much, patch bike tires with an epoxy of anger & hate,
as if every mile I pedalled was further from the feel of her breasts
on my lips & the look in her eyes
when I found them together, holding my guts
in hands like prayer beads I could no longer count
which looked strangely like bottles, ash & panties
torn from too many legs I pretended
weren't hers,

until --

The night I got out of the hospital,
it was snowing, so hard there were no longer roads
but ruts
all leading to another home
where I did not belong,

& a whole bunch of white space, like fresh margins
pushed to the side by a chaos of words

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

an awkward adolescence learning to dance
the circumference of puberty's circumstance,
on the cusp of & falling

on two feet, on the way to six,
somewhere in the middle where you take dreams
off at the door, like shoes, so you don't track
mud in

the old man hugging a cane at the turn of the river,
where all the maidens leave the water,
about to pull out

I am the watch
man telling time with my hands,
like a blind man. I keep them in motion
collecting faces in circles
of our loco/motion

I must re-wind regularly
or lose minutes, never ours
to begin with

wrist worn
where the leather sweats and tightens,
that is the thing with time -- it never stretches
beyond its contractions & our actions
only quicken the knotches on the frame of the closet
until they are tracks - the train pulls out
& the conductor's checking tickets
to punch the clock
of our arrival
of our departure
of our occupation, by occupying
forces.

Time is money, money is time
& no one ever feels they are paid enough;
what we are worth.

What are we worth?
They put pyramids on our dollars to remind us
we are all a slave to something,
pick one. It's multiple
choice.

I bank mine in an account
for when I am asked to give an account
for it & don't count on interest.

At the bookstore, I watched a man,
lockpicked his life with my pen & stole three minutes
of his meaning. Time is of the essence.

He laughed & took ten back,
in a race between Walking Dead & Batman,
from who will win the Super Bowl to where I bought my shirt,
as an investment in human capital;futures
in a stock, not store bought
or auctioned off.

Watch long enough, the truth will walk
across the field of your vision - running fingers
through the wheat
both sold 4cheap 2often
to make bread,
to make cheddar.